Protective systems are well-known and in active use on many platforms (such as, for example, aircrafts, vessels, vehicles, tanks), as well as for protecting static installations (e. g. a guards post, industrial plants, warehouses) from those same kind of threats, namely attacks by guided armament equipped with an optical homing head (for example—a shoulder launched missile equipped with an infra red head, homing by locking on the heat radiated from the target—i. e. the engine of the platform (such as an aircraft) constituting a potential target).
Such systems are based on a carefully timed illumination, which is directional and accurate, provided by a radiation source—such as a laser system—and having at least one pre-tuned, encoded wavelength, aimed towards the guided armament equipped with an optical homing head element for jamming the optical element located at its head, e. g. blinding it, loading it by an over load of energy thus bringing it up to non-operating saturation, or at least degrading its operation so that it will be unable to detect the target and/or tracking it, diverting the guided armament to stray away from the target (thus reducing the threat it presented).
Thus, for example—
U.S. Pat. No. 5,600,434 describes an airborne pod, a replaceable container that contains, inter alia, a laser source—for jamming heat seeking homing missiles.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,410,897 describes a system and method for protecting aircrafts from threatening missiles, by employing a directional jamming device (for example, a laser system) that is mounted on a stabilized gimbaled platform. The system operates on a “step and staring” mode for performing its scanning operation of a sector in a wide field of view and looking for the threat.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,704,479 describes a fiber laser device that can be implemented for jamming missiles equipped with a homing head in the infrared range.
During the course of recent years, the term DIRCM (Directed Infra Red Counter Measure) has been a rooted household word in the terminology of professionals in this field for characterizing such protection systems against missiles equipped with an optical device in the infrared spectrum.
Such systems, described in the above cited various examples of prior art are prone to suffer from several drawbacks, for example they attribute a dedicated energy source to each jamming unit wherein the jamming unit is—by its nature—constrained to be effective only in a limited operation sector. A limitation created as a result of local masking by the presence of physical disturbances within close range from the jamming unit (e.g.—wherein the system is an airborne one—disturbances caused by the carrying aircraft fuselage).
In other words, in order to impart appropriate protection to the platform over an extended sector, systems of said prior art type required a whole set of energy sources (for example, several laser sources).
This—and more, the above cited prior art, does not treat the weak aspects of the protection systems, namely the necessity of maintaining a continuous tracking and examining the threatening armament in real time conditions, and this simultaneously while illuminating it using the countermeasures laser beam, in order to continuously evaluate the actual value of the threat posed by the specific armament.
Moreover, neither does it, according to the prior art, present the critical capabilities of producing control feedback and calibration (regarding the laser's output and its direction).
And finally, systems as operating in accordance with the prior art are based on a stabilized gimbaled arrangement, on which the majority of the systems' assemblies are mounted. Thus we are considering a cumbersome and sensitive structure that by the nature of this arrangement reduces the reliability of the systems and raises the level of required maintenance tasks during the system's lifetime.
Thus, at the time preceding the present invention, there definitely existed a need for a laser based system to provide protection against guided armament equipped with an optical homing head element, that would be of modular construction (from the aspect of its number of end units) but at the same time shall be based on a single energy source.
A protecting system that would enable to achieve tracking and examination of the threatening armament, providing real time performance, based on the optical reflections of the laser beam as they are continuously received from the potential threatening armament during its illumination while flying towards the protected platform.
A system that would include, in each of its end units, in an integral structure embedded means that would enable extracting control feed back and calibration (as it applies to the output of the laser and its sense).
A protection system equipped by an autonomous measurement and evaluation capabilities of the approaching threat's trajectory in order to evaluate the danger level of the specific advancing threat (for example, in cases of detecting and locating a plurality (“multiplied”) threat cases in the relevant combat arena and the need to assign priorities and jamming responses energy).
In addition, it is required that the protecting system as said shall be reliable, rugged and capable to withstand inclement weather and environmental conditions, achieved by a marked reduction of the number of moving and stabilized assemblies installed in it.